Flip Flop

(photo found here)

I spied a single flip flop in the road this morning, the kind of thing which makes me wonder…where’s the other one? Is the person missing their shoe? Or were they trying to throw them both away, and just dropped one? Who knows. But it reminded me of a story from my miss-spent youth.

When I was 22 or so, living in San Francisco, in a lovely flat on Fulton Street, I came home from work one night to find a young woman asleep on our doorstep. I was worried about her, but not worried enough to call the police. (Perhaps that would have been the smart thing to do…) We lived a few blocks from Haight Ashbury, and really, in any big city you might find someone drunk or stoned on your doorstep. Hell, it might happen in the suburbs or country too, right? So I worried about her, and wondered what to do. I decided that she might be hungry when she woke up, so I made her a pb&j sandwich, and left it there for her. The weather was balmy for the city, so I didn’t leave her a blanket. My roommate, btw, was against me doing this. He was worried that she might wake up and hurt me while I was leaving the sandwich. I wasn’t worried. She was small, and really out of it.

I woke up in the morning to find one flip flop and one untouched pb&j on the stoop. I brought the shoe inside and kept it as a memento of city life, and put it in the water closet along with other strange and sundry items that amused me. (I say water closet, because I believe that’s what the room is called when it only houses the toilet, and the tub/shower/sink are in a different room entirely.)

I found myself wondering about her this morning. Did she turn out a druggie, and end up as a prostitute in the tenderloin? Did she change her ways and is perhaps living near me out in the burbs? Did waking up on a strange doorstep scare her and make her rethink her choices in life? Does she even remember that morning, or was it one in a string of many? Where is she now? Did she even notice the sandwich? Did her feet hurt from walking home without one flip flop? Did the cops come and take her away while I was sleeping.

I guess I’ll never know. But I still do kind of wonder.